There was something unreal about California, noted George Payson
after his return to Boston. A lot of men had sailed from eastern ports in
1849, that much was sure. But as for the existence of California, while
there had been a lot of promises and talk, few of these promises had
been delivered, and much of the recent talk had been about humbugs
and elephants. Payson decided to address this problem in an introductory comment to his recollections, writing as “Francis Fogie, Sen.,
Esq.” “To be sure,” wrote the skeptical Old Fogie, “any number of
men and ships have set sail for California, but that's no sign that they
ever got there. They say so of course, for no one likes to be humbugged, but for all we know, they might just as well have gone to India,
or China, or Japan. I have noticed … they say very little about the gold
they have brought home, though that after all is the only real proof;
and they go into a huff if any one asks them how much they made. So
you see that, reasoning a priori, the balance of probability is decidedly
opposed to the existence of any such country.”
1 Indeed, for many
eastern observers the entire gold rush seemed like something out of the Arabian Nights. It contained, that is, quite a number of fascinating and
gruesome tales, and much literary style, but it lacked substance. The
United States Mint was reporting major shipments of gold, and so was
the Pacific Mail Service. But for wives and loved ones, the reports were
nearly always the same. Their forty-niners were failing at the mines.
Many had sent home daguerreotypes of themselves dressed in authentic miner garb. Others had sent a morsel of yellow metal, presumably
gold, enough to make a cufflink or a small ring. But they sent little else,
apart from tear-stained letters of complaint; and they never seemed to
strike it rich. In fact, if anything was accomplished during these men's

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